Email Privacy

The other morning I received an email from an acquaintance I had met through a networking event.  It was a one off attendance and I barely had chance to meet everyone there, however did do the usual personal follow up after the event.

The email they had sent out  was a warning type chain email, no doubt we have all received them and all sent them at some point.   Most of these warning emails can be debunked as “urban legends” on sites such as Snopes, however, something more irritating than receiving something that could be debunked very quickly and simply, was the indiscretion involving the To: line.

My contact had simply pasted the entire contents of their address book into the To: field.  At a glance, I could see friends, colleagues and quite disturbingly, their competitors!    They had also pressed the Forward button and hadn’t deleted any of the information, so I had row upon row of email addresses!

The potential for an email harvester is apparent.  I counted the visible email addresses and could have emailed/spammed 87 (yes, a staggering 87) emails from the one apparently innocent “Fwd”.  Not so innocent now!

Points to bear in mind;

1)  Check out “urban legends” and if it sounds to good to be true, it generally is!  Don’t send “Fwd” emails without verifiying the information.

2) If you have to send “Fwd” emails, remove ALL data from the email, leaving just the joke or information.

3) Send selectively.

4) Use the BCC function on the email editor to hide all the email addresses from prying eyes (this also prevents anyone you send it too, including email addresses on their email)